Review: Red tape madness in America

Check out this video about stupid laws in America, and if it makes you laugh, remember that it has made many other people cry.

The video John Stossel's Illegal Everything can currently be found here. It runs to over forty minutes and covers a lot of ground, but sadly it could run to 4 or 5 times this length and still not cover half the ludicrous laws and local ordinances that have been foisted onto the American people by power mad bureaucrats and deceitful lobbyists, laws that are enforced at times with pathological zeal by fascistic police officers and even more fascistic government agencies like the EPA.

Can it really be a criminal offence for schoolkids to sell lemonade on hot summer days from their own front lawns? And was it really necessary for armed police to turn out in force to raid a food store that was selling...food?

In America, Britain and elsewhere, political correctness has been foisted onto the population by left wing zealots; this sort of madness is the mirror image of it, on the one hand there are big corporations and companies paying lobbyists enormous sums to bring about the framing of laws to restrict competition in the guise of protecting the public, and on the other there are government lawyers and agents who see it as their God given right to find some technicality that allows the prosecution and persecution of honest, upstanding citizens who only crime is to clean a ditch or sell lobsters in a packet instead of a box.

Without a detailed investigation, it is possible that there is more than meets the eye to some of these stories - remember the pigeon lady from Croydon? The chances are though that this is not the case.

This video also covers the behaviour of some police officers when they are being filmed by citizens - by and large not good - but if you're not old enough to remember Rodney King, think instead of Nicola Fisher or Ian Tomlinson. Finally, the issues of the war on drugs and prostitution are also covered. There is food for thought here as well as humour.